


Ashes on the Wind

by Trialia



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e12 Revelations, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-16
Updated: 2008-06-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 02:39:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trialia/pseuds/Trialia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is this what they were meant to find?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes on the Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-read by Miss Cam. Spoilers for 'Revelations'.

She breathes, slowly, sitting on a stump of something left in this place (_this wasteland,_ she's trying not to think), watching human and Cylon alike walk on the ground of Earth and despair, and wonder what happened.

She almost doesn't want to breathe; the chill air that sears her throat and lungs has a taste to it, a sharp tang of stale, bleak, steel-grey emptiness.

Even Kobol had _life_.

_Is this what we were meant for? Where the scriptures told me to lead my people? _

She'd never expected to see Earth, though she'd had hope here and there; the last thing she had expected was this: barren death, like the cancer that's slowly killing her.

They can't stay here.

Not if it's all like this: a nuclear wasteland can't support that much life this close to destruction. And it is close, or was: she knows no city could endure that amount of damage and still be left with so much standing after even a few centuries. The radiation's only diminished enough to spare their lives, not to support new life, and certainly not to be healthy.

They can't settle here.

It still feels like the journey is over, though, somehow. She'd thought once they all reached Earth that she wouldn't have to hold on any longer, that she could just slip away and out of life like a thief in the night, with as few regrets.

As Bill Adama lowers himself to sit by her side, she leans into the shelter he provides, strong and warm, and knows that she won't. That she'd regret. She's not ready yet; may never be, so long as this man is alive to tie her, willingly, to him.

He's looking at her as if she might break, or if he might. She just may, alone with him later. For now, she's holding on to her strength in all ways she can, as she snakes an arm around his waist. Neither smile: the comfort taken in their being together is enough to hold them up, but not enough for joy, not at this moment in time.

There's no life on the planet beyond the people who have landed here, and barely anything in her voice as she speaks: no emotion, no expression; no life. Nothing but silence and the fleet and the two of them, side by side.

"Earth."


End file.
